Potpourri

Several things are going on in the studio currently.

On the jacquard loom, I've started weaving another copy of the Aileen image. The original, woven on 960 hooks, went to my sister as a birthday gift; the next one, woven on 1,440 hooks, had too many lifting errors in it that I couldn't fix with needle and thread; so I need another to use as a booth sample Woven Portrait. (You can find a link to a PDF of the flyer for them here.)

In a pot in the studio mini-kitchen, there are a couple of lengths of silk chiffon soaking in the remains of the bloodwood dye that I used back in October; the pot has been sitting on the balcony waiting for me to use up the rest of the color left in it. I think I have some madder-dyed fleece in the stash that would be a close match, which I will felt onto the silk.

And in another pot is a skein of fine tramm silk soaking in a cold alum mordant bath. It'll be ready for a fresh wood-derived dyebath in 2 or 3 more days. Because tramm tangles if you look at it crosswise, and is one of the most difficult threads to wind from a skein onto cones, I try to keep agitation and movement to an absolute minimum. So a cold mordant soak of up to a week, then a room-temperature dyebath that doesn't need a lot of stirring is best.

Those are just some of the projects going on in the studio this week. In addition, DH and I are collaborating on an "interactive textile" intended to be entered into the ITAB 2014 exhibition, information about which is on this page. Until it's completed, and entered, I can't talk much more about it, except to say DH is having a lot of fun playing with some new toys - hardware and software for the Arduino platform - that will be incorporated into a jacquard weaving.